Mercedes have revealed that they plan to bring a new front wing to the Circuit of the Americas this weekend for the US Grand Prix.

The wing actually debuted last time out in Singapore, getting one hour of practice on the front of Kimi Antonelli's car before being shelved for the rest of the weekend as the team reverted back to their previous iteration.

Mercedes deputy technical director Simone Resta revealed on the latest edition of the Nu Silver Arrows podcast that the team had never intended for the wing to be part of their Singapore plans beyond that FP1 session – but the team took that opportunity to learn a few things.

Personnel at the Silver Arrows are hopeful that the aero upgrade can help them close the gap that Red Bull and Max Verstappen appear to have pulled out over the last couple of races, with the Dutchman claiming a full 58 points in Sepang and Singapore.

Using the lone practice session of a sprint weekend to test a new part, rather than lock in a setup for the weekend, is a slightly unusual call – although daytime conditions in Singapore, when FP1 was held, are vastly different to the nighttime conditions for qualifying and the grand prix.

Mercedes wanted to 'accelerate learning' in Singapore

Resta said: “In a sprint weekend the only moment where you can do testing is FP1. It’s one session, it’s one hour, you have normally two set of tyres and then you need to learn exactly on a green track where the car is. And then, you have a different package than your teammate.

“And also, as we wanted to accelerate the learning, we even did a test with the new front wing during FP1. So in such a short time, we changed many things because our objective was to try to learn as quick as possible for the short and medium term. Wanted to check the new front wing.

“Of course, we weren’t planning to race it here, but we wanted to check it, compare with the old one, get the data, bring the data home, do the homework and prepare ourselves in the best way for the next event.

“So you need to also to see that as an investment on our future to gather the data, to gather the understanding, and then at the time to think, simulate, run on the simulator, and then move on.”

Mercedes chief: Balance of risk meant not running new wing in qualifying

The team's deputy team principal Bradley Lord noted that the single hour of track time with the new wing should help the team at the US Grand Prix this weekend.

“And it’s worth saying it was worth our while running that front wing in FP1 as well," he said, "because we learned things that will mean we can hopefully hit the ground running in a better way when we get to Austin with both cars in the updated config and running that kit, running the new front wing and able to hopefully make the most of that higher peak performance in a way we haven’t been able to do as effectively so far.”

“We only had one there, so we’d rushed it through production.

“But obviously if you’ve only got one example, you run the risk of pit lane starts if you damage things. And so the balance of risk didn’t favour running it for qualifying or in sprint or the main race, but certainly doing the learning was really, really useful.”